There is still tons of additions coming onto the site. So, make sure you peek once in a while.

The site is unique, colorful and minimalistic as is often the result of working in partnership with Malik Media. The site fetures an elegant jQuery slideshow on the homepage.

The site features a magnifying glass and zoom-in Flash-based plugin for the project’s architectural drawings and an editable price list.

Needless to say, it’s always a pleasure to work with Marita & Faith’s incredible team. A special thanks to Becky Fletcher for her beautiful eye, and to Katt Wamsley and Sarah Tolai for bearing with us through the home stretch! Yay!

Bennett Home Improvement is a family-owned, family-run business based in Burlington, which has been awarded many times by the community on their quality of service and excellent customer service.

Although the site has just what it needs to have, their are big plans for this baby, so keep an eye on it. Other than that, the site changes colours depending on what time of day you go have a look.

I am a Portfolio Manager, Partner, Co-founder, and Executive Vice President of Wickham Investment Counsel Inc. in Hamilton Ontario

If you have some time, stop by mike’s website. It is really informative, and his expertise really shows in his writings.

My original selector looked something like this:

And here is what I noticed afterwards:

1. If the title contains only one word, it actually disappears,
2. More often than not, you will have nested tags in your titles and they would get lost when the script runs

So to fix both issues, we just have to account for those possibilities:

Note that the same can be true for small, strong, em, and other tags, etc. The point is just to be careful.

Here’s Chris’ original article on preventing title widows just for reference.

Say you have a box (div) displaying a different testimonial every time the page is loaded. And you want two other boxes to be the same height as the one with the variable size testimonial.

* Note that if your content contains images, you will want to run the script once the window is loaded instead.

The Javascript

Nice & easy:

I will actually work on a example integrating WordPress into the equation and update this article as soon as I get some spare time in my hands.

If you have a more efficient method, please comment away! Otherwise, I hope you find this useful.

http://net.tutsplus.com/

I don’t think I even have to say a word about this one. The whole Envato network is simply “mind-blowingly” solid.

High quality tutorials and screencasts, managed by the legendary Jeffrey Way.

CSS-Tricks

http://css-tricks.com

Chris Coyier has a pretty unique way to tutor you through the countless issues he’s faced in the past. If you go through all the posts in CSS Tricks and pay attention you will save yourself a thousand headaches.

CSS Trick - Curated by Chris Coyier

jQuery 4 Designers

http://jqueryfordesigners.com

While not updated as frequently as the blogs mentioned above, every single screencast Remy Sharp’s done on jQuery is extremely informative. No doubt he is a busy guy. If you’ve never used jQuery before, and have some programing experience, this site will give you a lot more to “write about”.

JQuery For Designers - Learn jQuery, it's a must!

David Walsh

http://davidwalsh.name

David is pretty much Remy’s evil twin. The former a die-hard Mootools fan and the later a die-hard jQuery fan. Take your pick.

PHP, MooTools, jQuery, Javascript & more

Web Designer Wall (Nick La)

http://webdesignerwall.com

I had to praise the local talent as well! Nick’s blog mixes artistic inspiration with valuable information like a true pro. I hope his obvious gift with the pen tool is contagious.

Web Designer Wall - Creative Design at its best

Digging Into WordPress

http://digwp.com

Another site co-authored by Chris Coyier & Jeff Starr (Perishable Press) released to compliment their also awesome book Diggin’ Into WordPress. Both the book and the site are meant to fill in the gaps when it comes to WordPress configuration, coding and administration.

Digging Into WordPress - Hmm, not much to explain...

WP Beginner

http://wpbeginner.com

Like the name suggests, this is a great place to start if you are thinking of coding your first WordPress theme. Even though I’ve been doing WordPress sites for quite a while, going over some of WP Beginner’s knowledge base has proven worth my time.

WP Beginner - The basics and not so basics for WP lovers

Smashing Magazine

http://smashingmagazine.com

I remember landing on Vitaly’s Friedman’s personal site back in the day and thinking He’s only 18!. He is now one of the main faces running the Smashing Network.

Smashing Magazine - A plethora of resources into one.

Sitepoint

http://sitepoint.com

Sitepoint tends to cover both technical and broader topics all related to web development. It is a great resource to keep up with general knowledge and news about the industry. They also tend to shine the spotlight on the newer technologies pretty quickly.

Sitepoint - News, Articles & Tutorials on Web Development

And it goes on…

I seriously think reading and understanding everything already written in the sites above would easily take you more than four years. In that sense, the Internet has become a gift and a curse on all of us, and that’s all I meant in the introduction. Going to College or University also helps with other valuable aspects such as building social, teamwork & project management skills, providing field experience while being fun at the same time.

There are also many, many, many other sites out there that fit in this category. For example, w3schools is a great resource when it comes to any language related to web development. Others like CSS Perk, and CSS Elite are great sources of ideas and inspiration, and yet others like Freelance Folder hammer on the aspects of running your own business.

As far as SEO goes, I am no expert, but if I must point you somewhere for that, I would look at the Google’s  SEO Starter Guide to begin with, and on that note, I think that nothing beats high quality content, but the SEO field can be extended much further if you consider things like ad campaigns, information architecture, keyword analysis, landing pages, etc.

Last but not least, if you know of any other great resources for web development, please leave a comment! Writing this article also made me realize that I don’t really know any outstanding sites for learning how to make websites using Flash (not that it is my niche, but maybe soon I’ll make the time to learn it. I know things changed a lot with ActionScript 3.x and there must be as many tools out there for this purpose as there are for CMS sites today). Furthermore, none of the Joomla! tutorial sites I’ve been to have left a good enough impression. For that, the official Joomla! Forum and the Joomla! Developer Site have been pretty useful.

I hope this list helps us make the web a better place and also helps our clients understand how much work can go into every project.

CU3ER unfortunately depends on both Flash 9 & javascript to work. So if you expect lots of your visitors to lack either of them, CU3ER is not for you. Having said that, CU3ER is way cool!

In nutshell, you will need to:

1. Download and upload the necessary files onto your sever
2. Include cu3er.swf, swfobject.js, expressInstall.swf, optionally font.swf
3. Upload your images and not their absolute location.
4. Add a div with alternate content in case js or Flash are not available
5. Create a config.xml to communicate with your instance of CU3ER

A Quick Tutorial

Let’s get to it.

First, you need to dowload CU3ER, and upload the files to a folder on your server (e.g. “/cu3er”).

Second, you need include and configure the swfobject plugin:

Third, include the HTML for the CU3ER container and an alternative in case flash or javascript is disabled. The code below is not optimal, and it is not what I have on my homepage. You can place whatever HTML you’d like and I encourage to do so if you want to be able to tell your fwends your site is progressively enhanced.

The last step is to edit your config.xml file. This file basically passes all the parameters to your instance of CU3ER. Once you are acquainted with the available properties it will be a lot easier but the whole thing is pretty self-explanatory. Here is cropped version of the one I used for the animation on my homepage.

So, there you have it. I know it looks like a lot but I think it’s totally worthy, don’t you?

If you want to really dig into this technology, please visit the fabulous, official CU3ER documentation.

Trust me, after you do this once, doing it again will be a piece of cake.

If you know any other great galleries, please leave a comment and let me know.

Have fun!